Tornadic Storms

Tim Vasquez

Monday, June 20, 2022 at 11:40 AM ET

Verified

An EF5 tornado was almost a mile wide and was on the ground at the time of this radar image.

Key Takeaways:

Tornado forecasting evolved from initial avoidance by the U.S. Weather Bureau to sophisticated "ingredients-based" methods, significantly driven by aviation safety needs, leading to the development of specialized centers like the Aviation Weather Center.
Key meteorological indicators for tornadic storms include strong directional wind shear in the lower atmosphere, which generates helicity, and the presence of a mesocyclone—a large, rotating circulation within the storm detectable by Doppler radar.
Powerful updrafts, characteristic of severe storms, create unique radar signatures like "Weak Echo Regions" (WERs) and "Bounded Weak Echo Regions" (BWERs) due to delayed precipitation, serving as crucial indicators of tornado potential even when low-altitude reflectivity is absent.
Actual tornado formation remains complex and is monitored through nowcasting, relying on radar data, field reports, and visual cues such as a rotating wall cloud, with pilots needing to be aware of cyclic supercells that can produce multiple tornadoes.

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Whether you’re in meteorology school or ground school, the tornado undoubtedly captures the attention. I’ve often noticed how a room goes silent when a conversation about this topic begins. Popular weather articles describe the tornado in terms of collisions between the air masses, jet streams, and fronts, and then go on to describe how to take shelter.

However in this article we’ll give you an explanation that’s more grounded in aviation meteorology. In the airplane there’s no place to hide, so you might as well have the best information at hand so you can make sense of these phenomena when they spring up. I would recommend checking back with our March 2022 article on severe storms for some good starter material.